Resurgence
by Cerulean.Phoenix7
Summary: She didn't realize that her dreams were only portents of things to come. *COMPLETE*
1. Part I

Resurgence

_A/N__: Suggestion lead to speculation; speculation leads to ideas; ideas lead to fanfiction. This is set after 4.03 'Alone in the World' and is mainly inspired by the final scene where Olivia reveals that she has been seeing Peter in her dreams._

_With this fic I'd like to give a shoutout to Ambre (Elialys), who has written some of the most emotional stories that I've ever read. Keep doing the great work that you do Ambre!_

_Many thanks as always go to my beta Uroboros75 :)_

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the tide that the ocean of my ideas obeys, rising and then falling with the breath of my imagination.

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><p><em>"The human brain is a miracle... a most resilient organ... a storage unit for everything you have ever known... seen, or felt. It's all still in there, whether or not you are conscious of that." - Walter Bishop, "6955 kHz"<em>

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><p>It's only a quarter past dawn and she already needs a second cup of coffee as Walter progresses to theory number one hundred and ninety-four.<p>

She didn't realize that when she confided in Walter of her dreams with the mysterious stranger that it would spark a thousand theories in his ever-inventive mind. By the time he reaches the absurdity of aliens and poltergeists she feels a headache beginning to tip on the precipice of her tolerance; it's too damn_ early_ for this.

Theory two hundred and fifteen is when she cracks. She stands abruptly and tells Walter that she's going to get a cup of coffee. Astrid looks her way with a mix of concern and confusion; the latter has become increasingly common for them as of late. Olivia gives her a considerate nod, an in-between of silence and an _I'm fine_ before grabbing her coat – the long, black pea coat that is a staple of her wardrobe from October to March – and walks out the door.

At the coffee shop three blocks away she orders a large black with one sugar and sits by the window; she needs a few moments to collect her thoughts before they drag her to the ground. The idea that her entire life is comparable with falsified information is staggering at best, and makes her feel like a fraud at the worst. She wonders what she was originally like before this calamity; was she in another field, another job, hell, another _country_?

She wonders if she was _happy_.

She fiddles with the cover of her coffee, mindlessly chiseling away at the darkened plastic with her nails as the shop's entrance bell chimes obnoxiously loud in her ears. She cannot comprehend an existence other than what she has always known, and the temptation of something better sparks a bit of jealousy in her. She's been fighting for years for something she doesn't understand and gotten nothing in return; she thinks that by now she deserved to have at least a small slice of that infamous human euphoria.

"Olivia," a voice interjects with such abruptness that she nearly knocks over her coffee.

"Hey."

She manages to catch it from plummeting to liquid disaster, but not without that dull tear that signals a ruined nail. She looks up to see the bespectacled face of Agent Lincoln Lee (theirs of course, since Broyles doesn't exactly approve of allowing their doppelgangers the opportunity to run freely like a herd of gazelles through their universe), and she tries to smile, although exhaustion makes it rather difficult.

"Hey," she responds, feigning enthusiasm. It's not that she doesn't _want_ to talk to him; she had simply been enjoying the unobtrusive company that silence was providing.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Lincoln asks, his own cup of coffee perched soundly in his right hand.

She nods gently and motions to the seat across from her as she reassures herself that this is nothing more than two colleagues meeting at the same coffee shop at eight o'clock in the morning, a mere coincidental occurrence. But even that seems tainted with absurdity.

She tries to return attention to the flimsy plastic cap on her coffee, but her torn nail creates a most annoying friction and the motion only makes her brows tense.

"You remember how you mentioned those hypothetical times when I may be freaked out?" he says casually, and she can already tell where this conversation is going. She's on the fence as to whether she likes it or not, because she doesn't really want to talk about the things that are happening around her, but it seems like it's the thing that she _needs _the most.

"And I said that I was here for you," she answers, looking up from the crinkled rim of her coffee cup. "If ever you needed it."

He shrugs, a lazy half-grin curling over his face. "Well, I was wondering if... if that offer still stands."

She leans forward on the table, her palms pressing against each other as she intertwines her fingers; she wishes that it wasn't always her own hands that were locking together like this.

"It does," she replies. For a moment she's almost tempted to ask if he'll return the favor, but that would be too easy and the thought of doing so quickly becomes too difficult.

He shrugs lightly and then shakes his head, and she can tell by the confusion beneath the curve of his glasses that he's seriously troubled. "Do you ever wonder what it was like... before _he_ vanished? What our lives were like? How do you try and get on with your life knowing that your every thought, every memory… knowing that every moment of your life might have been nothing but a colossal lie?"

She curls her bottom lip over the top one slowly before letting it drag over her teeth; she puts her hands in her lap to hide the trembles that are starting in her fingertips.

"All the time," she whispers, and she sees a slight blurriness in the corners of her vision. She swallows thickly, because she needs composure more than anything at this moment.

He looks at her incredulously as his dark brows arch high along his forehead. "How do you deal with it? How is it even possible to _try_ and comprehend all this?" He sets his coffee on the table and leans forward; his hands come up and fold together before he leans his forehead on them. "I just... I just wish that things could be _easier_," he whispers.

She looks at his half-hidden eyes and knows the trouble that is haunting him at those un-Godly hours; they are the exact same troubles that have her reaching for her bottle of whisky at three in the morning. The symmetry between their troubles is both comforting and frightening, because she didn't think it would be _this_ easy to understand Lincoln Lee.

"You know," she says after a heavy pause, "I've always wished for a moment where things could be simple for once, to have a second where a decision didn't have so much weight attached to it, where a thought didn't come with so many burdens."

Lincoln sees where she's going with this and lowers his hands away from his face, his right coming to rest on the table top. His eyes brighten a little like a child being told the secret to winning at hide-and-seek.

"But I've realized that... there _are_ no moments like that," she continues. "Every decision we make echoes through our lives and we have no way of adjusting them. Now, we have the choice of living with what we've known…" She lays a hand on Lincoln's. "…or risking everything for lives that we know nothing about."

Lincoln looks from their hands up to her, and the comfort in his face is shadowed with a sense of awkwardness. She instantly regrets that boldness and slowly withdraws her hand from atop Lincoln's. He takes his cup of coffee from the table and stands, moving for the door.

As he pushes his chair in, he looks to Olivia one last time, and she sees a sincerity that she hasn't known in years. "Thank you, Olivia."

As he turns to leave, she smiles briefly and replies into the air. "You're welcome."

Left alone with her cold coffee, she thinks of the last time another man took her hand out of sheer affection, the last time she's known something as tangible as love. The last time was John, before he died in that horrifying catastrophe of pseudo-science led astray. The awkwardness of her conversation with Lincoln still seeps into her body, cooling her fiery ambition. She misses the days when awkwardness was not in her relationship vocabulary, and she could simply live without boundaries.

She looks out the window at Lincoln's parting car and wishes that things were easier than _this_.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart, something tells her that it_ should be._

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><p><strong>As always, please review! There are more chapters still to come :D<strong>


	2. Part II

A/N: Alright, here is the next chapter of this fic. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed thus far; you guys are awesome :)

Fun fact: I listen to music when I write; I always do. There's a specific group of songs that I've been listening to while writing this fic. In no particular order they are: 'Hide and Seek' - Imogen Heap; '(*Fin)' - Anberlin; 'Homecoming' - Hans Zimmer (from the soundtrack for 'The Pacific'); 'The lovers dreaming' - Max Richter; 'Losing Your Memory' - Ryan Star and 'Lost in Paradise' - Evanescence.

Many thanks go to my fantastic beta, Uroboros75.

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><p>She arrives back at the lab to be bombarded by the nonsensical lightning of Walter's frantic brainstorm; and off to the side is Astrid, trying to keep a firm grip on the situation.<p>

Olivia sets her cup of coffee down on the nearest counter top and slowly walks towards Walter, who is rushing back and forth between lab benches with no discernable purpose. Olivia has come to learn, however, that despite Walter's apparent lack of sanity his actions always have a purpose. She approaches him slowly, casually so as not to frighten him, and places a gentle hand on his shoulder as he rifles through a mountain of wrinkled papers.

"Walter," she says softly. "What are you doing?"

He turns around sharply, his face only inches from hers. She can see the tears beading along his eyelashes and her first instinct is to hug him, but there are circumstances pleading for her attention and she cannot abandon them for a second.

Walter sees her stoic stance and knows that she is awaiting an answer. "I know where he is," he says, a slight whimper trembling beneath his words.

"Who, Walter?" Astrid asks, and Olivia remembers that she knows nothing about the man who's been staring at Walter from the confines of mirrors for the past two weeks.

"The man," he says, and Olivia watches Astrid's eyebrows rise. "The man I've been seeing."

The silence that follows is enough to make a pin drop sound like gun fire.

"Walter," Astrid asks skeptically, and Olivia knows that she's already questioning the amount of medication circulating in Walter's bloodstream. "What man?"

Walter's expression falls into a heartbroken gaze instantly. "You haven't seen him?" But before Olivia can stop him, he blurts out an unwarranted justification. "But Olivia's been seeing him as well."

That makes Astrid pause. No, scratch that; it makes her _freeze_ in the middle of the lab as she is torn between two people who must seem insane to her now. She looks to Olivia for answers, but Olivia has none. After a moment, Astrid manages to get a few words out.

"Olivia," she asks. "Is he right?"

Olivia nods silently, because there is no other way to go about this than direct admittance; she knows that Astrid would have found out eventually. She reaches into the breast pocket of her coat and pulls out the folded piece of paper that's been tucked in there for the past two weeks.

She never goes anywhere without it.

Olivia unfolds the paper – the innocent sketch of their mystery man staring back at her – before she passes the page to Astrid. The younger woman looks it over once, twice, and Olivia knows that she doesn't feel that _need _for recognition arising in her mind.

Astrid shakes her head, a few of her dark curls bobbing over her forehead. "I've never seen him before," she says before handing the page back to Olivia.

Olivia accepts it gently, afraid of dropping the only evidence that she has of possible sanity. She's nothing short of crushed that Astrid hasn't seen this man before, and it terrifies her to think that this tempting madness is something that is only afflicting her and Walter.

"Are you sure?" Olivia asks, silently yearning for an ounce of reassertion.

Astrid nods. "Yeah. I've never seen him before."

Her hope crashes into a fiery pyre of disappointment as her arm drops and the drawing grazes against her pant leg. She wonders if these dreams are nothing more than mild delusions, a prelude to her own madness. It's a disconcerting notion to say the least, but she doesn't have the heart to entertain anything better at the moment.

For an instant, she questions her own sanity.

What keeps the doubt from strengthening any further is the irritating squeal of the lab door as it creaks open, yielding a rather jittery Lincoln. Olivia wonders if that cup of coffee she saw him with this morning had in fact been the accompaniment to another five.

He looks her way briefly without any real acknowledgement before noticing the strain in all their faces.

"Is everything okay?" he asks, his eyes nervous beneath the black rim of his glasses.

Walter makes a soft reply, and Olivia knows that he's just as afraid as she is of accusations of insanity.

"Olivia, show Kennedy the drawing."

She doesn't comply immediately, letting her fingers curl over the rough canvas of her drawing. She's had it tucked away in the breast pocket of her pea coat for the past two weeks, stowed away over her beating heart because for some reason it feels _right_ for it to be there; it makes the hole inside of her feel a little smaller.

With a great amount of apprehension, she hands the unfolded drawing to Lincoln, her eyes watching the shadow that her arm casts on the floor all the while.

He takes the page gently from her nimble fingers, careful not to graze them with his own.

After a moment, she looks over at him and watches the way he studies the picture; his eyebrows crunch together in the most fascinating way, like wood chips smacking against each other.

When he doesn't make a response right away, a bloom of hope opens up inside her, eager to welcome the rays of promise.

Then the minutes drag on even more, and she begins to fear that he is doing this for the sake of mockery, and she is the farthest thing from amused. She reaches out and quickly snatches the paper from his hands, ignoring his slight whine of protest. As she quickly folds the paper back up and moves to tuck it inside her coat, Lincoln speaks.

"I've seen him before," he says.

Olivia turns sharply, disbelief drowning her ears as she tucks the page completely out of sight.

"Where?" she asks, pivoting and walking straight to him. She leaves no room for comfort, as this is no time for luxuries.

The tension flushes his face as his shoulders bunch up beneath his jacket; his glasses dip on the curve of his nose. "In a newspaper, once," he says, his voice wavering. "It was weird because it was in the obituaries, and I was only skimming through it… but I definitely saw his face." He motions towards Olivia and the picture tucked away in her pea coat. "I thought it was weird, because there was something familiar about his face, but I've never seen him before. I looked away for one second, and when I looked back his picture was replaced by another in the paper. I thought that I was imagining things."

Olivia shakes her head, coincidence overpowering any notion of doubt in her mind; she knows now that it's paramount that they find this man. Whatever is happening to them and their world is something far too intricate to be mere déjà vu.

Lincoln interrupts her contemplative silence before she can say anything else. "Is there something I'm missing?"

Walter shuffles over, his hands deep in the pockets of his lab coat. "You see, Kennedy, there is a man I've been seeing around the lab, on mirrors and other reflective objects. Olivia has been seeing him too, in her dreams; and apparently you are the third person to be added to our witness list."

Lincoln steps back, his lips pursing slightly before he replies. "...What? That doesn't make any sense." He turns to Olivia. "Has someone been checking his meds?"

Olivia rolls her eyes at Lincoln; he really has _no _idea what he's gotten himself into. "Despite what you may think, Agent Lee, I don't doubt Walter's explanation, and I don't doubt what I've been seeing. You may doubt _what_ you saw, but you know that you saw _something_."

Lincoln swallows, and she watches the anxious bob of his Adam's apple beneath the supple flesh of his throat. She hopes that he didn't have _too_ much coffee this morning; all that jittering would do him no good.

"Agent Dunham," Walter says as he walks back over to the black chalkboard in the far corner of the lab. He pauses when he reaches it and turns around. "Would you like to hear my newest theory?"

Olivia has nearly forgotten why she paused in the first place; Walter said he knew where the man was. She sees Lincoln look from Walter back to her in utter confusion.

"What theory?" he asks as he straightens his glasses. When no one answers him he places his hands on his hips and looks at Olivia, annoyance splaying over his features. "Would you mind explaining to me what the hell is going on?"

"Walter thinks that he's found where this man might be," Olivia answers, strolling forward to Walter's blackboard. She leans against a counter as Walter begins his explanation, and from the corner of her eye she sees Lincoln casually step next to her, his arms crossed over his chest.

Walter begins by unrolling a long sheet of paper in the shade of cerulean; Olivia's seen it before and knows it well. He sticks it to the board before turning back to his crowd (of which Olivia is sure that she's the only one who _really_ understands what he's doing) and reaching for a piece of licorice to munch on.

"I believe that this," he says with a flick of his hand over the blueprints, "is what our mystery man is currently trapped in."

"You mean that he's trapped inside the _machine_?" Astrid asks. She shakes her head.

"Walter, that thing is made from solid metal; there's no way that a person could be trapped in there. And besides, if there was someone trapped in there, wouldn't we have found some sort of sign by now?"

Walter's face lights up like a star as he takes another enthusiastic bite of his licorice. "An excellent question, my dear Watson; but that assumes that we are dealing with something _corporeal_."

Olivia sees Lincoln's eyes scrunch together, disbelief breaking out over his face. "You're saying that he's not there in _body_, as a physical person like us? Then how is he inside of the machine?"

Walter holds up a finger, excitement clearly building in the man's eyes as he takes a step towards Lincoln. "Because I suspect that he is entwined with the machine as a form of _energy_. That's what the human body is; energy! And by the laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."

It's Olivia's turn to step forward with the questions, and she raises an arm from her chest to motion to the diagram. There's still a large hole in this explanation, and she refuses to leave anything up to pure intuition. "But how did he _get there _in the first place, Walter? If the energy of the human body can only be transformed, then what turned him from a man into incorporeal energy?"

She sees Walter's face drop as all inspiration left him. The glimmer in his eyes fades to dark obsidian and for the first time, she understands why. There are answers out there that he hasn't found, things that he is still searching for in the grand designs of the world. She understands because she too is still searching, trying to understand why the dice have fallen in such a fashion for her and why this man keeps appearing in her dreams. She desires coherency in her life and at the moment, the whisky bottle tucked in her kitchen cupboard wasn't nearly enough to maintain the balance.

Walter shakes his head. "I wish I knew," he answers with a sigh. "It's something that I simply cannot explain at the moment."

"Then how did you even come to the conclusion that he was there?" Astrid asks, and Olivia knows that she's still not convinced.

"Because if there is one thing that does not lie, Astro, it's evidence," Walter replies as he tosses another long sheet of paper on the table. It's a graph, with a squiggly line bobbing along the page, but closer to the far right, it makes a rapid ascension. "I was going over the energy readings of the device for the past month, and right _here_. The readings increase by close to triple that of what has been normal for the past six months." He places his finger on the rapid increase on the graph. "I asked the other scientists who were monitoring the device, and they could not fathom a reason for such an increase."

"But how did this lead you to the explanation that a _person_ must be responsible for this?" Lincoln interrupts. Walter frowns slightly. "Patience, Kennedy."

_"It's Lincoln," _Olivia hears him hiss under his breath; she has to resist the urge to smile.

"Now," he continues. "As I was saying, the scientists had no idea as to why this sudden increase in energy had occurred. But more curiously was that _it hasn't changed since_. It has remained at the same energy level it reached the day of the increase."

"Which suggests that energy was added to the device in some way," Olivia added.

"Precisely," Walter said. "After I discussed this with the scientists, I took a look at the blueprints myself, and I noticed something rather interesting." He motioned to the ports jutting into the central space of the device, two at the top and bottom.

"I suspect that these were designed for a _person_ to be housed in," he said.

Olivia shook her head; why would a machine of such design require a _person_ of all things as a component for operation? She's heard of many strange and peculiar things in her line of work, but this borders on the impossible.

"Why, Walter?" she asks, and she receives a morose gaze in return.

"I believe that whatever person was housed in this... this _harness_," he said, choking slightly on the word, "would have been the power source for this device."

"So is it possible that a person went into this harness," Lincoln interjects, "and bonded with this machine?"

"I suppose that is one viable option, Kennedy," Walter answers. "But for the time being, I will remain open to any other hypotheses that I can concoct. So if you'll excuse me, I do believe that I have some work to do."

With that, Walter struts back to his chalkboard. Astrid looks to Olivia and Lincoln for an instant and shakes her head. "This is all just a little too bizarre for my tastes," she whispers, and Olivia sees Lincoln nod in agreement.

"That makes two of us," he replies.

Olivia shoots a look at Lincoln, because she's frankly _annoyed_ at his mannerisms and how he seems to object to the possibilities spreading out before them. To her it feels like an actual shot at answers, and Lincoln's mind appears to shut tight like the skin of an acorn. She doesn't condone him for it, but she'd really appreciate a little more intrigue on his end.

Astrid is already walking away before Olivia can say anything to her, so she turns to Lincoln instead.

"Tell me," she says as her arms fold tightly over her chest. "Just what about this is so _eerie_ to you?"

His eyebrows rise. "Are you kidding me?" That ridiculous half-grin begins to form on his face, but she demolishes it with her rocky expression; she's not amused.

"Look," he says, returning to seriousness. "You have a reason to go with this; you want answers. My answers... I don't know, but I don't think that they lie in that machine."

He leaves, and even the paper resting over her thumping heart isn't enough to fill the hole that his disbelief rips open inside of her.

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><p><strong>Please review! Next up: the machine...<strong>


	3. Part III

A/N: Hey everyone! Here's the next chapter of this fic, and thank you to all those who have reviewed this story and/or favourited/alerted; it means so much to me :D

And in other news, after an overly long wait... FRINGE is back tonight!

Thanks to Uroboros75 for the beta work.

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><p>Five hours later, in the company of some stale cornflakes and a glass of amber whisky, she opens the first obituary file in the Boston Globe's archive. The images are mostly of the elderly, whose wispy hair and deep features offset them from the gentle contours of her sketch. She takes a sip of her whisky and moves on to the next file, and it too contains not even a glimmer of familiarity.<p>

She searches files from the past six months and there is still nothing; after what she thinks is the fifth glass of whisky she forgoes the glass altogether and sets the bottle next to her on the table. She nibbles at the dry cereal from the alabaster bowl in her lap but pushes it onto the far edge of the table when the taste of bland dust fills her mouth.

After sifting through months of files from the newspaper, she moves onto another, and then another; she finds nothing. The FBI archives have given her nothing, and neither have these papers. She feels like a rope cut too short for its purpose, and that her imaginings lie far beyond the grasp of her mind. She reaches for the bottle of whisky, swirling the amber against the blocky lattice of the bottle before raising it to her mouth.

She stops.

The bottle is inches from her lips as the whisky wafts up into her face, but she cannot make herself take another sip. She can't because she knows that it will do no good in her instance of paralyzing confusion; the hole in her life has swallowed her joy and dreams, and now it's taken away her ability to forget that fact. She's grown used to having liquor as a companion, as liquid the colour of amber doesn't have a voice that tries to better things that she doesn't want fixed; she feels as if this hole in her life has a _purpose_, and it is her responsibility to determine why. Sometimes she just likes to forget the gnawing sensation it creates as it grazes her heart, sliding against the aged scars that still show a tender red.

Maybe she's not supposed to feel anything other than this pain.

She runs a hand through her tangled blonde hair and sighs heavily; she can't believe in things that have no promise, and this search has less than none. She wants so desperately to find this man, because she feels _something_ when she looks at that picture. When her hands skim over the page with a freshly sharpened pencil and the graphite sprays over the milky whiteness she feels a little less obsolete, as if a speck of certainty has been added to what she's doing, and that she's working towards something.

In this moment, she feels stuck in the limbo between movement and stasis; she feels as if nothing is changing, and whatever she does goes unnoticed by those who surround her.

She feels lost in this archaic world of interpretations, because any path that she sees leads to nowhere.

She's startled when her phone chimes to life next to her, and the blue display glows beneath the chunky black letters; Walter's calling her.

"Walter?" she asks tentatively as she pressed the phone to her ear.

"Olivia? This is Walter Bishop, here. I've called to inform you of a most exciting discovery. I've found it at last!"

Olivia shakes her head, her understanding diluted by whisky and exhaustion. "Found what, Walter?"

She hears a pause, and the definite clang of metal before Walter answers. "I know how to get him out," he says. "I know how to get the man out of the machine."

Olivia drops her phone, letting it clatter across the hardwood floor, followed by a long silence.

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><p>She only registers about half of Walter's explanation a few hours later when she arrives in New York with Astrid; Lincoln is only paces behind them as they walk into the Bridge Room. They haven't exactly told anyone on the Other Side about their suspicions, and Broyles knows next to nothing about their 'sightings'. Olivia's authorization gets them in, and that's all they need; the other scientists work with Walter willingly over a video conference projected on a smooth canvas suspended in the air. From the projection he seems to hover over everyone else, and from there authority seems to lend itself to him.<p>

What should only take a few hours ends up taking three times longer because of the meticulous details that Walter wanted to go over. She pities Astrid for the first hour, having to run around with Walter's voice clipped into her ear like a parrot, but after the first _six_ hours she relishes her own freedom.

At eight, her eyelids start to droop, and she can't help but feel the desire for sleep pulse through her. She rolls her shoulders a few times and swallows; she can't fall asleep now.

"Olivia," a voice interjects, and when she turns she sees that it's Lincoln. "Are you alright?"

She nods briefly. "Yeah… I'm fine," she answers, and even after she's clipped the sentence she doesn't believe it; she's been awake more nights than she's slept for the past two weeks, and she's hoping that it still doesn't show. "I'm just... a little tired," she added.

He tilts his head slightly and his glasses slide down his nose an inch or two. "Olivia, if you need some rest..."

"I'm fine," she interrupts. She refuses to allow pity to grant her special excuses, and in this instance she doesn't want to be seen as the one with unstable ground beneath her; she's always been the strong one, and she will not allow herself to lose that.

"No, you're not," he answers, and she flicks her face towards him quickly in a shock of blonde hair. His statement is so blunt that she's not prepared for it and the mark it makes.

"You're tired. You drink who knows how many cups of coffee per day and your eyes are dark, and you look like someone who hasn't had a decent sleep in weeks."

Her speechlessness comes as a result of how accurate his words are; they hit the crimson bull's eye straight on without any error. It irks her because she knows what led him to that conclusion, and his wonderings about her personal stability aren't really something that she wants to call into existence. She wants to listen to him, because her body is simply craving sleep so badly that she wonders if she'll pass out soon (and wouldn't _that_ make a scene).

"Go," he says, motioning to the door. "Get some rest; I'll let you know the minute anything interesting happens."

She smirks for an instant. "Okay," she says softly before moving towards the door, her exhausted body lacking any energy for further protests.

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><p><em>Olivia... please, help me. You're the only one who can remember me.<em>

_Olivia... Olivia…_

"Olivia, wake up!"

Something nudges her shoulder once, then twice before she opens her eyes. Lincoln is standing next to the cot that she's curled up in, his hand resting on her shoulder. She blinks for an instant and then pushes herself up, her hands kneading into the lumpy mattress.

"What is it?" she asks, rubbing her eyes slightly.

"We're ready to go," he answers, tucking his hands in his pockets.

"The device is active?" Lincoln shakes his head gently.

"No, but they've done every procedure in the books by the sound of what Walter was telling them."

She smiles and stretches slightly beneath her stiff jacket, her shoulder blades pushing against the taut fabric. "How long have I been up here?"

That crooked half-grin rises on his face again. "Well, if it gives you any idea, it's almost dawn now."

She freezes halfway through running a hand through her hair; that means that...

"…I've been up here for almost a day? Why'd you let me sleep? Broyles would have a fit if he saw me taking that many hours off on the job."

Lincoln steps forward and sits next to her on the cot, his weight shifting her balance so that she leans towards him. "Maybe so, but Broyles isn't here at the moment so I think you're safe. You needed the rest anyways."

She looked back at him, his dark eyes small in their gentle concern. She appreciates his caring, because it's something that she hasn't known in years; it's like she's found a trinket that she thought she lost behind a dresser many years ago.

"And what about you?" she asks. "Did you get any rest at all, or were you up with all of those night owls?"

He chuckles, and she feels the vibrations of his amusement seep into her; it's nice being near that kind of joy again. It makes a soft, warm sensation billow into her lungs like wind. Lincoln lightly slaps his palms on his thighs, and she can see the tension blooming in his joints.

"No, not really," he shrugs. "I got an hour or two, maybe three. You get what you can in this line of work, I suppose."

She nods slightly, leaning forward to join her fingers above her pressed palms. He smiles at her, his wide grin spilling onto his face before he stands. He straightens his jacket and offers his hand to her. "Come on," he says. "We'd better go find out what's waiting for us."

She stands, and grips his hand without hesitation.

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><p>The Bridge Room crackles with voices, sparks of directions snapping in the air like firecrackers. Walter's form still looms from its lofty perch on the oversized screen, but his posture is lacking in confidence, and it makes Olivia think of a misplaced child; Walter is not the dictatorial type. Large, oversized screens that scream attention and authority belong in Walternate's bag of tricks, and she knows that that's no Pandora's Box that Walter would go snooping in.<p>

She's already let go of Lincoln's hand before they enter the room; she doesn't want to cause a fuss, and god knows that if it's not Walter it'll be Nina to point it out (though she wasn't initially there, Lincoln's told her that word's reached Broyles, and that means that Nina must know too).

It's also a cause of the feeling that stirs in her chest whenever she enters that room, that whatever she's doing now is what she's _meant _to be doing. She's never been a fan of destiny, but she can't ignore the tiny glimmer of bright promise blooming open in that dark abyss of her life, because she's never known anything else and right now she wants that promise to prosper.

Lincoln moves to one of the stations monitoring the readings on the machine (albeit one not too distant from her) and pretends to look interested. Olivia walks forward as the last few scientists clear the area around the machine, creating a circle of trepidation around the device; she knows not to cross it, for that would be tempting with fate in the most obnoxious way. She hears Walter give the order to power the device and begin the procedure, but her eyes remain fixed on the empty harness in the centre of that monolith of metal. There's an enticing thought at _who _may appear between those cuffs, but it also draws dark shadows of apprehension in her mind; she has no idea as to what they may be unleashing.

The room dims slightly, the lights flicker like the last remnants of a dying candle before giving out. The enormous screen where Walter had been present blinks into darkness as the room fills with the chatter of concern.

For a few moments Olivia remains perfectly still, because she simply doesn't want to move and trip over something; or worse, trip over someone. She thinks that she hears someone call her name once, maybe twice; she wonders if it's Lincoln searching for her in this confusing abyss.

A deep, bluish glow illuminates some of the room and Olivia thinks that it's the emergency lights kicking in from the generators that they keep reserved for such incidents. It's dim, and the slight pulse in its intensity is unusual to say the least; but when she looks back at the machine, she knows that it's no emergency lights.

Entangled in the centre of the machine is a fizzling ball of azure energy, roiling and spinning with the fury of a star. She takes a step in the dim light towards the device, and she sees a few dull shapes in the cloud of energy. It takes her all of thirty seconds to realize that it's a face; the gentle slope of the cheeks, the bridge of the nose perched between two piercing eyes. It's not foreboding, but rather innocent, and something in her whispers that this ambiguous face presents no threat; for the face is not yet clear, as there are features still blurred by the squiggles of blue lightning are dancing over _his _face.

_His?_

Since when did she decide that this stranger was a man?

The idea shocks her, yet nonetheless drives her to take a few steps closer to the device; maybe it's something in the way his eyes are following her, but she knows that fear has long since been discarded in favor of something she could not quite define.

The energy condenses, drawing in on itself like a fold as she nears it. She can see the shape of arms and legs beginning to form, dyed with the glimmering luminosity that still surrounds him. She takes another step, this one more cautious and hesitant as she's not too sure what to expect once this process ends, and that uncertainty drags icicles over her bones.

The light grows in intensity and Olivia covers her eyes with her hand, blinking against something with such ferocious tenacity that she fears what will come when it ends. Power displayed in such a manner has potential on a dizzying scale, and that kind of ability requires control to avert chaos; Olivia's not sure if she's ever had that kind of control.

The energy finally fades, leaving a man harnessed in the machine. She looks to him, his face young and dotted with stubble. His eyes are deep in their sharp blueness above the curve of his cheekbones. His familiarity goes as far as her dreams before hitting a thick wall of which there is no way around.

"Olivia!" he says, the joy in his eyes sounding like a trumpet chorus as his arms are released from the shackles of the device. His legs come free a moment later and he's nearly jumping down the latter towards her. She backs away, afraid of this relationship that she should know but has no notion of; it makes that little bubble of brightness burst inside the confines of the black abyss as she shakes her head at him.

"I'm sorry," she says, her jaw tight and her eyes stinging. "I don't know you."

He stops, his exhilaration snapping in half like a rotted tree; his expression falls from joy to sorrow in seconds, the contours of his face droop and his eyes go dark in the dim room; they look nearly black.

"Olivia," he says, taking another step forward. "It's me. It's _Peter_."

She steps away from him, shaking her head in fear. She tries to utter a soft _no_, but all that leaves her lips is a slight gasp. She can't be near this man because she doesn't understand how he can even _be_ at the moment, and what he represents is something she has never known. What he knows is a life that is ethereal to her, something that she's probably dreamed of but cast aside in favour of realism.

She backs away from him because she can't give him what she knows he's looking in her eyes for. The consuming joy that had spread over his face spoke far too much for her liking, and revealed something that she had never considered.

This man had loved her, once.

She brushes a hand beneath her nose as he stands before her, bewildered, like a dog turned away from its owner. She doesn't reach out for him, because that would be confirming that which he wants, and she can't give him that which she does not have. In the same instant it pains her because it represents everything that she has ever wanted, but pretending something that she will not – _cannot_ – feel is immoral in any sense.

She tries to avert her eyes from his, leaning her neck back slightly to glance at the clock gazing at her from the wall. Its numbers are coloured an animated crimson, the light from the display bleeds onto the tiled floor in a bloody mirror.

It reads 6:02 AM.

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><p><strong>HE'S BACK!<strong>

**Please leave a review on your way out :D**


	4. Part IV

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm very excited to present the next chapter of this fic to you, as this is where we really start to see some of the effects of Peter's return (and if you know me well then you know that I can't resist a little angst :P). Enjoy.

Thanks goes to my fantastic beta, Uroboros75.

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><p>He spends three days in solitary confinement before Broyles finally decides to take him seriously. Freedom comes in small increments. First, thirty minutes outside the cell, then an hour, then two.<p>

After three weeks, he's allowed to visit the lab.

When he walks in, Walter's puttering around with the usual suspicious concoctions and Astrid is by the computer, her fingers flying over the keys. Only now does he truly consider himself back home from the state of metaphysical depersonalization that he was stuck in; but when Walter and Astrid both look his way and say absolutely nothing, the ensuing silence slices through his euphoria with the precision of the finest blade.

He stands there for a moment, caught in the thick Bermuda Triangle of their gazes before he moves towards Walter, whom he suspects, with any luck, would be the more receiving of the two.

"Hey, Walter," he says nonchalantly as he attempts to peek over the man's shoulder. Walter flinches away almost immediately, curling the test tube in his hands closer to his chest.

"How do you know my name?" he asks with eyes wide from building apprehension.

Peter holds his hands up, keeping his distance between himself and Walter; he's only come to try and weave some of these shattered bonds, not crush them further. He doesn't understand how they cannot remember him. He remembers Walter clearly from the moments before he stepped into the machine, as the man whose lower lip quivered over the prospect of losing his son; then, in the future, as the man who discovered how to exploit the hidden loopholes of the matrix of Time in order to cheat its principles.

As the man who would sacrifice anything for Peter's sake, anything to see him smile.

To see him _alive_.

He sees none of that now. There remained only the broken shadow of scientist without a cause.

"Walter," he repeats, seeing less of a flinch now and more a gnawing fear. "It's Peter. Your _son_."

Walter shakes his head, his eyes billowing like sails caught in a summer wind. "My son died at Reiden Lake over twenty-five years ago."

Peter shakes his head; he knows that isn't true because he _remembers _what happened that night, the moment where the Observer pulled him and Walter from the lake shining brightly in his mind. He remembers it now because the shock of being pulled from a plane of non-existence back into reality is a far greater shock than that.

"No, he didn't, Walter," Peter replies. "He's standing right in front of you."

Walter tilts his head slightly, and for an instant Peter dares to believe that there's a flicker of recognition in the old man's eyes, but his posture remains closed off, his arms crossed over his chest in a way that bristles the hairs at the top of Peter's spine. He had often wondered what would happen if he'd never been saved on that night; now he knows.

"If that's true," said Walter, "then why do I remember none of it?"

Peter shrugs and shakes his head. "I don't know, Walter. But if there is anyone that has the ability to figure that out, it's you. You need to figure out why this happened. What went wrong when I stepped into that machine?"

Walter purses his lips. "No," he says and shakes his head, becoming more furious with each passing second. "No. For all I know, you could be one of those sadistic Shapeshifters sent by my devious counterpart in order to gain information that he can use as leverage. I will play no part in such a scheme!"

"Walter!" Peter exclaims, his hands curling to fists in the pockets of his pea coat. His frustration is growing to match his anxiety, and that's never a good sign. He longs for the familiar tone Walter would use with him, one with caring and tinged with authority; the voice of a father. He even admits to himself in his nostalgia that he misses Walter's blatant remarks about the grotesqueness of the bodies they'd often encounter, simply because that was the man he'd come to know as Walter Bishop. This shell that stands before him, befuddled by the simple presence of Peter is someone he's never known.

"I'm not part of some scheme, or whatever else you think that the Other Side is plotting against you. I just want you to remember me."

He sees a softness enter Walter's eyes, a gentle compassion that Peter wants so desperately to build upon; Walter needs this support, this foundation of goodness and trust that keeps him above the murky waters of insanity. Walter's face droops into a frown as he sets his test tube back on the rack, its gentle _clink_ echoing through the room. Peter wonders if he sees it yet, those moments that he knows are there but just beyond the connections that his mind can make.

"Do you remember that lucky silver dollar I had when I was a kid?" Peter asks, and he almost smiles when Walter looks at him with a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

"My Peter had one too," he says, his eyes shaded with sorrow. "He was always trying to flip it over his fingers. He eventually got it, before he died."

Peter regrets bringing it up as a flash of pain clearly overwhelms any notion of remembrance that had previously occupied Walter's eyes.

He goes for the other end of the nostalgia spectrum, hoping for something a little more cheerful and bountiful in obscurity, something that Walter will have a hard time denying.

"Remember the cottage we had at Reiden Lake? You'd always wake up early on the weekends to make pancakes," he says, feeling a smile growing on his face as the warm scent of freshly cooked batter wafts into his body. "I'd come downstairs and there would be a huge stack of them waiting for me on the table; the ones shaped like whales were always my favorite."

"Such information could have been easily acquired through some non-approved snooping, I'm sure," Walter quips, and Peter feels a slash of pain at the remark. "Despite what you say, young man, I do remember some of these things, but I do not remember you. I remember my son, Peter, dying when he was a boy," he adds, and Peter notices the tears brimming at the corners of his eyes; he doesn't mean to make him upset, but it hurts Peter more to know that he is nothing but a random vapor to them.

"Your assistant, Astrid," Peter says, and he doesn't bother to look to see if she turns her head. "You always get her name wrong, you call her Aspirin, Asterix, Astro and probably a slew of others that I've failed to mention." He steps forward so that he's less than a meter from Walter. "Now I'm pretty sure knowing that would require more than non-approved snooping."

"That may be," Walter concedes. "But I remember none of this with you; you simply appeared in that device, and that is the first time I have ever seen you. I may try and remember other times, but where I try to place you in those scenes, the pieces don't match. It seems, almost as if you aren't _meant _to be here."

His words carve deep gashes of sadness in Peter, and when he excuses himself to his office Peter wonders if remaining in that dreary limbo would have been a better choice.

He's about ready to give up and leave when Astrid pipes in from her computer station. "I think that if you really want to convince him, it's going to take more than a few random memories to do it."

He turns slightly, twisting his neck over the curve of his shoulder to look her way. Astrid sits stoically, and the way her blazer is tucked in around her waist speaks business and nothing more.

"And you, Astrid?" he asks, feigning as much innocence as he can in what he hopes will come across as benign curiosity. "What will it take to convince you?"

She looks back to her computer, her eyes never leaving the screen as she responds. "Certainly more than a few nicknames, but even then your chances of convincing me are slim at best."

He feels his shoulders bunch up slightly, almost defensively at her blatant comment.

"Come on, Astrid; it's me."

Her head snaps up then, and Peter slinks back a step. Her eyes have been reduced to dark syrup comparable to molasses; it whispers to him in a foreboding manner, as if he'll be sucked into nothingness if he gets too close. She's unwilling to believe something that seems so plainly obvious to Peter, but the shell of her temperament has thickened beyond his ability to break through, so he retreats into silence.

"I don't know you," she says, punctuating each word. Her words are like the strikes of a whip on Peter's memory. " I have never seen you before in my life; you may think that you know things about me or my life but that doesn't matter so long as your identity is in question," she says as she turns back to her computer screen. Peter watches her for another moment in silence, flabbergasted by the sheer bluntness of her words; she's become a carving knife, sharpened to a hair's width by the shifting of time.

She reaches for a muffin that sits nonchalantly next to her cup of coffee and takes a bite; the gesture reminds Peter of a moment that he's sure contains a few mutual memories.

"You're nervous, aren't you?" he asks, and she pauses mid-chew. The tight lock of her jaw disconcerts him the most as she continues and swallows heavily.

"What makes you say that?" she asks, her voice peppered with curiosity.

"You bake when you're nervous," he explained. "Pies and cakes and muffins and all sorts of things." He lets out a small chuckle before continuing. "You once joked that I had made you so worried that you ate all the things you baked and were going to sending me the bill for your lap-band."

She shakes her head, and the lack of recognition makes the balloon of his laughter burst like a dying star. "I never said that to anyone," she answers, curling her bottom lip over the top one. "How did you know?"

He straightens his shoulders and tries not to sigh. "Because I remember you telling me."

She takes a sip from her coffee, her eyes never leaving his face, as if she expects him to make some audacious and dangerous move - like a jackal cornered in an alleyway the colour of a bloody moon. She sets the mug down and sets her one hand on the desk before standing.

"You may know these things, Peter Bishop, but _how _and _why_ you know them is what bothers me. I think that until we can know otherwise, it's best if you keep those little tidbits of knowledge to yourself."

Then Astrid walks away before Peter can make another response.

He never expected to come back to a world that had re-molded itself in his literal absence, and where the gaps of his existence once sunk into the expanse of these universes, they had bled together into a new, almost violet mixture of the world he knows. Every ounce of what he's come to acknowledge as familiar is different, and where memory and swift rebuttals would usually suit his purposes, he's caught in the headlights of a world colliding with his own. Every interaction, reaction and perception is changed; all his relationships have been made into martyrs for his non-existent past, leaving him with nothing of his own.

It makes him feel like Rip Van Winkle.

The shuffle of feet and _thunk _of a desk drawer alert him to another presence, and with a quick turn of his neck he sees the inky shadow staining the blinds in Olivia's office. She is the last person for him to try and reach out to; without her, his memory is as good as a single piece of art set aflame by rebels. He doesn't want to force the memories on her, but as of late she's been less than receptive; and frankly, it infuriates Peter to every extent. He's only trying to restore things to how they _should_ be, and he wishes that she could see the abhorrent wrong in the current state of things.

He makes the short stroll over to her office and knocks on the door, causing Olivia to look up from the chimera of paperwork staring in her face. There's a black pen tucked between her fingers and her black reading glasses are astutely perched on the bridge of her nose; he's missed those glasses.

"Can I help you with something, Mister Bishop?" she asks, and way her voice mimics that of a librarian makes Peter's blood go frosty; she's so aloof around him that even cynicism can't dull the throb it creates in his chest. He's so baffled by the new path that his words should take that he stands there in the doorway to her office for what feels like hours before he actually thinks of something to say. Even then, she beats him to the punch.

"Are you just gonna stand there, or do you need something?" She quirks her eyebrows at him as she takes a sip of her coffee, and that's when her expression goes sour. She makes a disgusted face at the cup and sets it back down on the table.

"Got your coffee order wrong?" he chimes, already knowing how annoyed she is at that; if there's one thing that you don't mess with, it's Olivia Dunham's coffee.

She makes a more mild face of annoyance and answers. "Yeah, they were way off; I usually take it –"

"– black with one sugar," Peter finishes.

She looks at him incredulously, because he's absolutely right and she simply can't get past the eeriness of it all. He knows so much more, but he's only giving her little tidbits, the same that he's done for the others; he knows that such a flood of information all at once will only serve as a catalyst for potential drowning. She doesn't deserve that kind of emotional assault; he knows the kind of ordeals that she's had to endure in the years that have clung to her like a rusted ball and chain. He's always been a gentleman around her, never rushing head-first into something that could only land him in the boiling pit of her resentment.

"Is that another one of those things that you just happen to know about me?" she asks, accusation seeping into her voice. Her tone is slightly deeper than he's used to, thick and sharp like the point of a whip. He swallows thickly before carefully choosing his next words; the last thing he wants at this moment is a verbal lashing from Olivia Dunham.

"It's not something that I _happen _to know," he states. "It's something I know because you told me how you like your coffee. And after I got your order wrong once you made sure that I never forgot it."

He sees the spike of curiosity in her gaze, and the thick knot in his stomach gives him an inkling as to what she's going to ask him next. He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans to try and stop the nervous jitter that he can feel creeping through the fibers of his nerves.

"Why did you get the order wrong?" she asks.

He feels his nails bite against the skin of his palm, a gritty burn like sand caking his skin in the sun. He doesn't want to tell her, but his honesty is already in question and if he backs out now there will be no more opportunities to secure trust of this importance.

"Because it was done the way _she_ liked it."

He doesn't have to explain who he's talking about; the horrified recognition in Olivia's face makes her realization evident for all to see. Her eyebrows drop, curled along her brow bone as the corners of her lips droop into a small frown; the subtlety of it frightens Peter, because he knows that this how much emotion she's allowing herself to reveal, beneath her canvas of calm there is an ocean of roiling secrets that she lets no one sail on.

When she finally does speak it's with a tentative whisper, quiet enough that makes part of Peter hurt for her fragility.

"You knew my alternate?"

He nods somberly, because any words he once had have taken refuge far beyond his reach; he can only remember words that were spoken to him, in a garden tainted with poisoned intentions.

_He said he looked into her eyes and he knew it wasn't her. _

Olivia's words still spike flares of regret inside of him, because as much as he hates to admit that he's wrong, denial cannot save him. He'd blatantly ignored the signs that something was afoot, and he'd paid the price in quiet nights and whiskey bottles.

"Yes," he says with a nod. "She... she switched places with you, Livia. When we were coming back from the Other Side, she switched places with you and came back over here."

He swallows, because he can already feel the clarity of his words slipping as his guise of calm falters. "She pretended to be _you_, Olivia; and I fell for it. I believed it."

He hopes that maybe a part of her will understand why he's saying this, even if she doesn't remember; his heart is hers, as he hopes it always will be. She takes her glasses off and sets them on the slew of files covering her desk before standing. She walks over to him and stops; Peter can see the tension filling her jaw.

"I never crossed over," she says, shaking her head. "I was kidnapped and held in a cell for two weeks before I got out."

He drops his head, the magnitude of her words settling heavily on his shoulders before he answers. "Olivia, I–"

She holds up a hand to silence him.

"She still pretended to be me, Peter," she says, and the conviction of her words is all he needs to feel a tiny speck of hope in this massive void of unfamiliarity. She lowers her hand again. "And people didn't know; Astrid, Walter, Broyles, none of them. Was that... was that how it happened for you?"

He nods softly, uncertainty drifting over his face. "Yeah. We only found out when you got a message through to our side."

She makes a strange face at him, scrunching her eyebrows before shaking her head. "I never sent a message Over Here, Peter; I was in a cell for two weeks. There was no way to get a message out."

"Then how did you get out?" he asks, because he's tired of beating around this prickly little bush of a cactus.

She looks straight at him, without hesitation because that's how she's always done things, and he's relieved to see that her conviction has at least survived this cataclysm. "I fought," she whispers, her voice a hiss that vibrates through his ears. "I clawed my way out of that hell, and came back to find that my world, my _home_, was no different."

He reaches a hand out to her, because he feels like she needs to ground herself in something other than this thrumming anger that's beating inside of her; she needs something _alive_ to remember what it's like to be just that, and Peter can think of no one better than himself.

"Olivia," he whispers as his hand reaches for her arm. She instantly recoils when she realizes what he's doing, and it's not anger that he sees in her eyes this time but a frightening uncertainty. "Sweetheart, listen to m–"

"Don't call me that," she snaps, the lightning in her tone crushing his good intentions. He thinks that she sees the instant look of hurt in his eyes and she says it again, her tone more hushed. "Don't call me that."

"Olivia, please; you have to listen to me. There are things happening here that I can't explain, and clearly, you can't either. Let me at least try and help you figure them out."

She's already so close to the door and so near the edge of Peter's reach that he feels fear trembling at the edge of his perception; he's already lost her once, and he's terrified of losing her again.

"Why?" she asks, and he sees that classic Dunham skepticism bleed into her tone, like ink into papyrus. He knows that she doesn't trust anyone without getting under their skin, because she wants to be sure that there's no chance of harm before she lets them get under _hers._

He swallows, feeling the tight muscle of his throat glide over his Adam's apple. "Because I've seen the things that you've been through; how you let yourself get close to people and then have them rip it all away. I've seen what the world has done to you Olivia, and it's terrifying. But you don't have to face these things on your own."

Her eyebrows knit together, tension crinkling in the folds of her brow as she crosses her arms tightly. "You know nothing about me," she says, her words piercing in their absolution. "How can you just assume that you know me from whatever information you've collected about me?"

"Olivia, this isn't just some covert operation where I've spent hours pouring over files about you, Astrid and the others," Peter says a bit more forcefully. "This is me telling you about the time that I remember spending with the Olivia that I knew."

He feels exhaustion begin to settle in on the crests of his shoulders; he wishes that she could just capitulate to consider his side of the story for even a single instant and give him a little morsel of hope to chew on.

Her next words make him pause, because they are far too _quiet_ for someone who seemed ready to walk out on him a few minutes ago.

"I'm not her," she whispers, and the pain in her eyes is all too clear. Peter comes close to smacking himself in the forehead, because even though the timeline has changed, Olivia was still replaced by her alternate. He sees the inferiority complex blooming open on her face, an onyx stain on the porcelain of her complexion. He wants to reach out to her, because she _is_ that Olivia that he remembers, the edges of her being are just hardened where he hasn't been present to sand them down.

"Yes you are, Olivia," he answers. "You are the Olivia that I met in Baghdad three years ago, the one who blackmailed me to come back; you're the Olivia who asked me to help you save your partner John." He sees recognition in her face, and knows that their first Fringe case ended on a much drearier note in his absence.

"You told me that you never really had a best friend when you were growing up," he smiles before continuing. "People called you _Han_." It's there again, and the fright accompanying it in Olivia's eyes almost makes him stop; but he doesn't, he can't now.

"When you lived on the military base in Jacksonville, your father painted the door red. You told me that that was the last place that you had felt normal in your life."

Her bottom lip is starting to quiver, and remorse is filtering into his heart; he doesn't want to cause her pain, but he needs her to remember him.

"You were part of the Jacksonville Cortexiphan trials conducted by Walter and his partner, William Bell; and because of that you were bestowed with psychic abilities, some of which you still don't understand."

Her head is shaking now, and through her apparent distress she manages to mumble a soft _stop_. He pauses and closes his lips, seeing the fruits of his labor crack open and rot before him. "Stop it," she says with a little more force.

He moves a little closer to her, reaching out a comforting hand, but she backs away, her eyes turning slightly red now. He just wants to comfort her, but she's having none of it.

"Olivia," he pleads. "Listen to me. Don't shut me out like this. Your life has put you through so much; don't put that all on yourself. Don't let things like your stepfather make you think that you have to lock yourself away from everyone."

Her expression uncoils instantly, and the terror that he sees lurking at the edges of her face is dark like obsidian. "What do you know about my stepfather?"

Peter's very careful with his next words; he knows how sensitive these wounds are and doesn't want to rend open scars that will never vanish. "When you were nine, you shot your stepfather. He survived, and he's been sending you a card on your birthday every year since then."

She stares at him for a moment, eyes blown wide into emerald pools before swiftly grabbing her coat from the chair and heading for the door.

"Wait, Olivia! What's wrong?"

She pauses at the door, her blonde hair like golden pins down her back. "_You_ are," she says with a turn of her head over her shoulder. "I _killed_ my stepfather." Then she leaves without another moment of hesitation.

Peter sprints after her, but the door to lab is already closing on the clacking metronome of her shoes when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. He lets his shoulders fall, the tension turning to lead in his muscles; he can feel the real exhaustion settling in now. He can't remember the last time he slept because in that intrinsic limbo he was in, he wasn't even sure if sleep was a known concept. There was simply _existence_.

He's about to go flop onto the lumpy couch in the lab when he hears the clack of shoes against the concrete again, and when he turns his attention to the far right of the lab he sees none other than Astrid. She looks calmly demure, but a hunch tells him that her keen hearing picked up on more than just a few words of his conversation with Olivia.

"Everything alright?" she asks politely, and this time Peter doesn't smile.

"Not really, no," he answers, settling himself by a lab bench as he rests an elbow on the cool surface. "I still don't understand this, Astrid," he says. "How did I manage to make things this... screwed up?"

"Well," she quips, "spontaneously emerging from the bottom of a random lake certainly doesn't help your case."

"Hey, if it had been my choice, I would've gone with a five-star hotel in New York," he retorts.

She walks over to him and places her hands, palms flat, against the bench top. "Witty retorts aside, Mr. Bishop, flooding all of us with these supposed 'memories' of lives that we don't know anything about is probably what the problem is."

"But I need you to remember; I need Olivia to remember," he protests, but it doesn't make Astrid change her stance.

"Maybe we're not supposed to remember," she answers, and Peter feels that possibility dig into his body with the precision of a scalpel; it cuts at the exact point it was meant to.

"No, this isn't right," he answers. "If I'm here, then there _must_ be something wrong, and I'm not going anywhere until I figure out what it is."

She makes a motion towards the office at the top of the stairs. "Is that what you were trying to find out with Olivia?"

He doesn't respond.

Astrid tilts her head, her black curls bobbing against her skin. "Why is it so important that she remembers above all others?"

He pauses for a moment because of all the people that he's told anything to, Astrid has proven to be one of the least receptive. Now the fact that she's so curious makes him pause; but he quickly dismisses it as simple curiosity and hopes that she's not looking for an excuse to get his ass thrown back in isolation.

"In the history before this one," he says with a motion of the lab and presumably, the changed world outside these walls, "in the timeline where I've lived my life, Olivia and I… were together."

Astrid raises an eyebrow, and at that moment he's glad that he didn't mention that Olivia had also been his future wife. He lets out a breath and begins to drum his fingers on the table instead.

The Astrid interrupts the silence, and his fingers fall still on the table. "The heart wants what it wants, Peter," she says. "But despite that, it doesn't always receive that." She withdraws her hands from the surface of the table and returns to her work, far away from him and his misery.

He remains seated by the table, and watches the reflections pan out against the skins of beakers like tattoos as his whole body sinks onto the surface, letting reality's weight push him into sleep.

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><p><strong>Please review! up next... Olivia confronts a few demons. <strong>


	5. Part V

A/N: Hello everyone; I now present the penultimate chapter of Resurgence.

Thanks as always go to my beta Uroboros75; without their help this fic would not be as it is now.

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><p>It's one in the morning and she's already downing her fifth glass of whiskey.<p>

The crystal bottle beside her is more than half empty by this point, the amber inside having merged with her bloodstream in a pleasant buzz. She tips back the glass and parts her lips for another shot; she enjoys the burn it creates against the back of her throat, like a warm flame caressing her flesh. She believes it, clings to it, harnesses its energy because it is so _real_; and that's all she's ever known it to be.

Her few indulgences are the things that keep her grounded in normality, which is something of an anomaly in her particular line of work. Peter Bishop, on the other hand, is so deeply rooted in absurdity that she thinks unicorns would have had a better run at convincing her. She's not used to this kind of exposure; her life is being rearranged into the jigsaw of another, and she struggles trying to match pieces of two entirely different scenes.

What's really gnawing at her is the nagging sense of _familiarity_ in her chest; a strong, deep sensation that bores through the cover of her special drawing straight into her being.

It's something that she feels that she should trust, despite there being no basis for such feelings.

That _terrifies_ her.

Her fear makes the world around her appear in dark shadows of onyx, casting her apartment in shades that she doesn't keep in her wardrobe. She swallows thickly, the pleasant burn of the whiskey muted by her nerves. The light from the street feels inadequate as she fumbles for her phone (because there is _no way_ that she is spending the rest of this hellish night by herself) and hits the number 3 button; the speed-dial for Lincoln's phone. She hears the other end ring twice before he answers, and she has to be careful that the breath she releases doesn't sound like a hurricane on his end.

"…Hello?"

His voice is husky, muddled with sleep and a pinch of annoyance. It certainly sounds better than the scratchy voice she first gives him.

"Lincoln," she says, and then clears her throat when she realizes that that horrible noise resembling skin against sand paper is her _voice._ "Hey," she adds.

"Olivia?" he asks, and the surprise is both pleasant and frustrating. Obviously it's her; if he's wondering if it's her double then he's _definitely_ more tired than she'd previously thought. "What is it?"

She pauses in the next moment or five, having _no_ idea what to say to Lincoln about all this. He would probably think that she's absolutely crazy if she told him that she's afraid of the shadows climbing up her walls, and that she's being haunted by things that she doesn't remember.

The truth has never seemed more absurd.

"Olivia?" he repeats, his voice more gentle now. "Is everything okay?"

She wants to say _no_, but that would be too easy; she needs him to understand what it was like to be in the lab with this man who knows them all and yet does not; he knows who they _were_, before whatever he did that made him the way he is now. Lincoln – being what she perceives as a lucky bastard – was absent from the lab, neither needed nor wanting to be there. She wishes for an instant that he had been; it would make explaining all of this so much easier.

But for now she'll have to make do with her own obsolete expressions. She takes a breath and whispers back into the phone.

"No."

There doesn't even seem to be a moment of silence between her response and his, but she hears the distinct rustling of bed sheets and the groan of a mattress as he answers. "What do you need?"

She silently praises his eager kindness; it's greater than what little kindness she's ever had the brief pleasure of knowing in her lifetime. She brings a hand up to her neck and gently runs her fingers over her collarbone, the skin there taut with tension that she's never thought of releasing. It's the stress, she realizes; she wonders how Lincoln handles it, or if he knows any remedies that she has yet to consider.

Olivia considers her next response carefully, because the words she chooses could mean one thing in her mind and something completely different in his. She isn't entirely sure why she called him; she boils it down to impulse, but even that is too general for her liking. The fact that she called him simply because _she wanted to _makes a shiver jitter up the length of her spine. After taking another shallow breath, her mind clears away a little more of the whiskey's influence and she feels the drumming of her heart against her rib cage and suddenly _knows_, as it is so distinctly in tune with everything that she's been looking for in this life that it strikes a chord of harmony inside of her.

She doesn't want to be _alone_.

"Can you come over?" she asks, and almost hiccups when she hears the strange high pitch of her voice, as if she had just swallowed a balloon's worth of helium.

There isn't a shred of hesitance in his voice. "I'm on my way."

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><p>She's surprised to find that the knock at her door twenty minutes later makes a bout of girly nervousness rise in her, but she doesn't quite understand why; after all, it's only Lincoln. Even so, she still double-checks through the peep hole before reaching for the door handle, as was her wont to do.<p>

Lincoln smiles with that wicked half grin of his through his slightly lop-sided glasses.

"Hey," he says, and she notices the one (or perhaps three) pieces of unruly hair that he failed to tame before coming over. She smiles at him anyways.

"Hey," she answers, stepping aside to let him in. He slowly treads past her, careful to leave a little space between them so that their bodies don't touch. She shuts the door after he's inside and presses her palms against the solid wood; how long has it been since she's had a man over at her apartment? She thinks back to John and their clandestine meetings at random hours, very few of which ever took place here. She lets out a quiet sigh and turns around, finding Lincoln waiting there for her.

He shrugs briefly before he speaks. "Olivia, what is it?"

She leans back against the sturdiness of the door and brings a hand up to her forehead. Where does she even begin to explain something as chaotic as the events that led to her to call him at this un-Godly hour?

"Olivia," he says, stepping up to her and placing his hands on her shoulders. "I may have only known you for a few months, but I think it's safe to say that calling me and asking me to come to your apartment at two in the morning says something." He runs his hands over her shoulders once; it feels nice. "Whatever it is, Olivia, you can tell me."

She swallows; her eyes feel clouded and warm. She tries to keep some sort of coherence in her expression, because she knows that she'll do a horrible job of explaining _anything_ to Lincoln in hysterics. She brings her hands up in front of her chest, not quite joined but enough that she can run the tip of her right thumb over the skin of her left hand; it's always comforted her.

"You remember when I said that if you were ever... freaked out about anything that I was here for you?"

He nods, taking another step closer to her. His hands are still gently cupping her shoulders. "Of course," he answers.

She nibbles at her lower lip, the pressure grazing against her nerves. "I was wondering... if you could do the same for me." The last few words are hushed, like the whispers she used to share with her sister at night when they were both supposed to be asleep. She's not used to being vulnerable, and the very idea of her heart being exposed in the absence of its protective vanguard scares her.

He brings a hand up to her face and brushes aside a few strands of stray hair; it makes her shiver. "Olivia," he whispers.

"I just…" She stammers, because she feels like she _needs_ to be speaking, as if leaving that void open for Lincoln is too dangerous. "I just need someone who can understand some of what I'm going through. I've seen some of the most bizarre things in my life, but this…" She loses her words for a second, and Lincoln is there with his gentle gaze. "This is nothing like that," she finishes, and quickly looks to her shoes.

There's a moment of unbearable silence before Lincoln presses a curved finger against her chin and raises her head to look at him. His eyes are a startling blue, and she thinks of water so clear that you can see through it for miles. "You said to me earlier that there are no easy moments; nothing ever comes easily to us." He tilts his head slightly, and she sees a slightly warped reflection of herself in his glasses. "Even if there are no moments like that, you don't have to face them alone." He leans in a little closer, his voice soft like wind in her ears. "I will always be here for you, Olivia."

She stands there for a moment, caught between a blooming relief and a frightening uncertainty, but Lincoln quickly crushes her doubt as he wraps his arms around her and pulls her flush against his body. For a moment she resists, and then capitulates to his embrace; she doesn't know when another moment like this will happen. He twines his fingers into her hair and presses a kiss to her cheek; the pucker of sound reverberates through her ears. She turns her head gently and this time meets his lips with hers. He tastes of scotch and mint, and she wonders if he too keeps a bottle in one of his desk drawers for those nights when everything needs to vanish but never does. She gently snakes a hand up into his hair and lets herself lean completely into what he is offering; she needs to trust him, because she can't think of anyone else who holds the same place as he does. She presses her lips more firmly against his, and he answers with a brush of his tongue over the soft flesh, which she quickly reciprocates.

Lincoln pushes her against the door, a loud _thunk_ answering her body as he goes for the buttons on her blouse. She grabs at his tie, her fingers getting caught in the knot before he reaches to his collar and removes it for her. She feels the need to smile and a pearl of joy drops onto her heart when she sees that he's smiling too.

Their pause is brief, and soon his hands are skimming beneath the hem of her shirt, trailing across the bare skin there. She lets him, even though she rarely lets people in like this; she's always used to being control, to having everything within her grasp and ability.

For once, she doesn't mind having someone look after her.

He casts his jacket to a far corner, quickly forgotten as she tugs at his shirt; the heat from his skin is enticing, and she desperately wants to feel it, feel that closeness with another human being. God knows how long it's been since she's known something as simple as human contact, and the idea of having someone's arms around her fills her with a warm joy. It reminds her of the first sip of hot chocolate on a cold winter day; decadent, and always leaving you wanting more.

Her shirt is gone now and so is his, but what she notices is the darkness of his eyes, the enamored passion roiling there. It makes something in her stomach flutter as she tilts her face to him. His lips meet hers again as they move away from the wall and in the general direction of her bedroom.

Her mind is wandering, floating amongst the waves of emotion inside her as Lincoln continues pressing kisses to her neck, each one releasing a little more of the tension there.

A face blooms into existence in her mind, and she passes it off as Lincoln's before the features take shape. The slope of the nose and curve of the cheeks is familiar in a very strange way to her, and that's when she realizes it.

The face she sees is that of Peter Bishop.

She stops encouraging Lincoln and steps away, the realization crashing upon her in a harsh wave as she presses a hand to Lincoln's shoulder and pushes him away.

She's done this before, but not with Lincoln. She's done this with Peter Bishop.

Lincoln sees her hesitation, and maybe it's something in her eyes or the way her hand cups his collarbone, but he knows that there is something wrong.

"Liv?" he asks, his glasses having slipped to the edge of his nose. "Are you okay?" He straightens up a moment later and nonchalantly pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. She turns away from him and takes a few steps, the air around her bare skin nipping at the exposed flesh; it makes her feel raw.

She looks over her shoulder at him, and the rest of her body follows. Her hands come up around her neck as her arms rest over her chest, shielding herself. "No," she whispers. She shakes her head, her blonde hair brushing against her skin in the process. "I can't do this, Lincoln."

"Olivia, what is it? Did I hurt you?" he asks, and the innocence of it makes something inside her shatter.

"No," she whispers. "I–"

She tries to explain it, but can't, and by the look on Lincoln's face she doesn't have to.

She doesn't expect his reaction to be as _crushed_ as he is, but she feels pity none the less; she did call him here, after all. She curses herself for letting herself unconsciously play these games with him, because even though she enjoys having him around, maybe even coming to _love_ his presence – he isn't what she wants most. Another look at Lincoln tells her that she's not the only one who knows it. She keeps her distance as he goes and retrieves his shirt from its tangle on her kitchen counter; she wishes that she could spot hers that easily, as she feels a sudden need for decency race up her spine.

Lincoln is too quick; before she even spots her shirt he's got his buttoned with his jacket and tie slung over his shoulder. He looks at her once more and Olivia sees a tinge of red in his eyes.

"You know… I was starting to think that tonight was a step forward between us," Lincoln says, his voice verging on monotone. "But it seems that you need to straighten out a few things first." He turns to the door, and his hand is curling around the handle when she protests.

"Lincoln, wait," she says softly, taking another step closer.

"I could have loved you, Olivia," he snaps, his head now facing her. The comment silences her into shame as she sees the red in his eyes grow a little fiercer. "I was willing to let myself be open to you, but that was clearly a mistake." He turns the door handle and steps out. Two steps beyond the threshold he adds. "At the very least I know that _I_ _exist_."

Then he walks away and she's left alone, in the absence of a shirt and companion. She quickly shuts the door; she can already imagine the neighbor's faces at the sight of her partially undressed with a man walking out of her apartment, and she doesn't need any strange tales sprouting out of their imaginations. She then strolls back to her bedroom, not even bothering to search for her shirt. She slumps onto the mattress, letting her form crumple slightly as she runs one thumb over the other in her hands; it doesn't bring her comfort this time.

She looks down at her hands and thinks for an instant.

_Is this what I've done to my life?_

She wonders if her hands are responsible for the tragedies that have shaped her, wielded her weapons of control into what they are today. She ponders the possibility of another's hands but even that skims on the surface of doubt. She thinks of all that she's done and all the actions that she has carried out.

Her hands are responsible for so much.

She remembers the weight of a gun in her hands, the weight of her phone when she called Lincoln.

Have all the choices she's made been rooted in such rotten intentions?

She doesn't want to believe that she's capable of such immorality, but the possibility looms in her face like a dragon and she simply cannot ignore it. She feels pressure building in her chest, the thoughts of every questionable action that she has ever committed – every person that she has ever _killed_ –surfacing in her mind.

Her hands start shaking.

She clenches them together and buries them in the bedding by her thighs as her head falls against her neck. Her throat feels tight like a noose. She's kept so many walls between herself and the rest of civilization that it feels like more than space that separates her and the other people she knows. In public, she lets nothing slip.

But here, in the private sanctum that she shares with no one, she lets the walls fall.

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><p><strong>Please leave a review, only one more chapter to go!<strong>


	6. Part VI

A/N: Hello everyone. First of all, I am so sorry to have kept everyone waiting on the final installment of this story; RL has been a little busy as of late. But here it is, finished, complete and I hope that you enjoy :)

Thanks to all my loyal readers and reviewers who have stuck with this fic for the past month; your words mean so much to me :)

And a HUGE thanks to my awesome beta, Uroboros75. Without their guidance my words would be lost in the ocean of consciousness and dreams.

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><p><span>Part VI<span>

It's when her hands stop shaking that she's finally able to stand again.

She slowly walks out of her bedroom and into the kitchen, still looking for her misplaced shirt. She finds it stuffed between a bookshelf and a wall like a crumpled and forgotten tissue, and then sighs in bitter relief upon finding it. Once she's retrieved it from its nook, she leans back against the door way to the kitchen and exhales; she doesn't understand how things have come to this. The sheer absurdity of her standing alone in her apartment with her shirt crumpled between her fingertips after nearly tumbling into bed with her partner screams of absurdity in the most obvious of ways.

Which was strange, seeing as absurdity has become a loyal companion in her line of work.

_How did I end up here?_

She asks this to herself, even though she knows that she will find no answer; she has none in this realm of ambiguities. She finds that questions only lead to more of the same, rarely any answers to be found. It seems that the relief of an answer has become like a rare fruit whose sweet flesh she has come to desire above all other things. She looks to the wrinkled heap of a shirt in her hands and wonders how she allowed herself to get that close to Lincoln, how she suddenly allowed her desire to overcome logic in such an instant (she supposes that the whiskey she'd been drinking didn't help in the decision-making).

_This is just... so fucked up_.

She unrolls her shirt from its messy ball of carelessness and throws it over her bare shoulders; it's only after she's tucked half the buttons back in their places that she realizes she was cold. She runs a hand over her bare throat, a space once peppered with Lincoln's warm kisses now cool and tight beneath her hand. Her arms curl around her body, the palms of her hands grasping her upper arms tightly as she sinks against the wall a little more.

It's not supposed to be like this.

She runs her hands over her arms, skin grazing against the cotton barrier. She misses Lincoln's hands there, his gentle touch inviting to her; but even that is a temptation to which she cannot capitulate. Not here, not now. Peter Bishop's face surfaced in her mind for a _reason_, and she already knows that she will resort to anything to find out _why_.

Olivia closes the last few buttons on her shirt and pushes herself away from the wall. She knows that this tangle of reality is about to unravel before her, and she refuses to be anywhere but in the front row. Her actions deem her to be nothing but resolute, and she is perfectly content with that because nothing else has ever worked quite as smoothly for her.

Her gun is already nestled at her hip, and her blazer perched on her shoulders when she reaches for her bag. She knows that her answers lie beyond this No Man's Land of uncertainty, and that they will surface anywhere but _here_.

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><p>It's three fifteen in the morning when Peter hears the lab door creak open, and he wonders for an instant if it's his escort back to Fort Knox (they were only four hours late, he notes with dissatisfaction). But a sweep of blonde hair over a panel of black tells him otherwise, and he retreats a few steps from the doors, because he knows the kinds of thoughts that these shadows can conjure in a place like this.<p>

The first word that comes to mind when he sees her is _frazzled_, but after another moment he realizes that even that doesn't quite capture the pale fragility haunting her face.

"Hey," he says from the bottom of the stairs.

Her response takes a few moments, and he wonders if she's trying to formulate a complicated response behind those frightened eyes, but her answer is only one word.

"…Hey."

He tilts his head slightly, because now something seems really _off_ (and not in the same sense as the differences he's seen over the past few days). Olivia is never this distracted unless there is something _wrong_.

"Olivia…" he says cautiously, taking a few steps closer to the stairs."…Are you alright?"

Her silence is heavy enough that it threatens to pin him to the floor. He keeps his distance, because he knows that the moment her space is invaded she'll retreat.

He just wants her to stay.

The words that they've exchanged have been...brash at best, and he knows that he can do better than that. He needs his Olivia back so he can try and understand this chain of events without everyone questioning his identity when they think that his ears are turned the other way.

He just needs her to _remember_.

She doesn't shake her head, but the subtle clue lies in the dip of the corners of her mouth. He knows that something's wrong. He takes a few steps closer, a hand reaching out for her.

"Hey, listen to me," he says, and she flinches away. His hands stops, but doesn't withdraw. "Sweetheart, I'm not going to hurt you."

This time she doesn't reprimand him, meeting him instead with silence. She pauses at the top of the stairwell as Peter's hand falls down to his side, and he looks away out of shyness. He still feels like a fool for presuming that everything would return to its normal state of affairs upon his return. On the contrary, it seemed to him as if someone had gone trigger happy on the red 'reset' button. Everything that was once blue is stained with the blood from the wounded walls of his existence; he's torn up so much of it that he isn't sure if there's any blue left to be had.

"You used to call me that, didn't you?" a voice pips in, and he has to turn to realize that it's Olivia, her hard edge lost to the quiet power of her voice. She comes down a few steps, and he shifts on the balls of his feet like a wary child. "That nickname. _Sweetheart_. You used to call me that in the other timeline didn't you?"

He crosses his arms in front of his chest, the muscles beneath his palms tensing and then releasing with a breath. "On occasion. It started out more as a joke when we first met. You weren't all that fond of it, as I recall."

She scoffs lightly, letting her facade tremble in the light of his humour. "I can't imagine I was," she says with a half-smile. "What are you still doing here? I came by to get some air, but I wasn't expecting anyone to be here but Walter."

Olivia tilts her head a little, and he watches the light flow over her skin.

"Funny, I was just wondering that myself," said Peter. "I'm not too sure if my escorts are just late or if there's some sort of crazy shenanigans going on that they've been called to deal with." He shrugs and fists his hands into his pockets, the slight sweat on his palms trailing against his fingertips.

"At least you didn't try and leave," she says as she walks down the stairs past him.

"Imagine the fuss that would've caused."

"Oh, believe me," he says, seeing her turn sharply. "I don't have to imagine."

She looks stupefied for an instant, so he changes the topic to ease her skepticism. "You got anything to drink? If I'm right, you've got a bottle of whiskey stashed in one of the filing cabinets of your office." He says it nonchalantly, but then realizes how his easy confidence comes off brashly. "That is," he adds quickly, pulling himself back from the precipice of utter stupidity, "if that's... still something you do. Or do at all."

His quick recovery seems to mend any breaks that he's caused in his casual mentioning, because Olivia disappears into her office and returns a moment later with a bottle of dark whiskey and two glasses perched between the fingers of her right hand.

He smiles when she sets the glasses down on the table; their resounding clink sounding like chimes and bells from a place and time far from here.

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><p>She wonders how he knows about the whiskey. She wonders how he knows her at all. It's the big mystery that's baffling them all, but for now she'll settle for a few trivial mysteries that she can resolve with a few words over a shot of whiskey. She kicks back a quick shot to start and then watches him, gauging his intake because she wants to know how far it takes him to get a little tipsy; hell, she could be here all night and still walk out that door with a straight face. Bishop, on the other hand…<p>

Well, she's willing to bet he'd have a little more difficulty.

She raises her eyebrow when he downs a shot and asks for more; he's like Oliver Twist, only with an overdose of bravado. Still, she pours a little more into his glass and watches as he tips it back again, his Adam's apple bobbing beneath the flesh of his throat.

She's distracted by his composure, and it shows because her glass remains empty. When he softly clunks his glass back onto the bench top she has to quickly think of something to avert his attention.

"So... how did you know that I like whiskey?" she asks, even though she already knows half of the answer.

He runs his fingers over the cool glass, and she watches the little drops of condensation bead over the tips of them; it makes them slightly... _enticing_.

"The Olivia I know," he begins, eyes flicking from her to the whiskey glass, "is rather fond of whiskey. I saw her a few times with a bottle when she thought I wasn't looking."

He smiles to himself, and she thinks that he must be tracing goofy patterns on the glass.

"You were always good at that."

"Good at what?" she asks, and this time she truly _doesn't_ know the answer.

"At being inconspicuous," he replies, and it takes her aback for an instant until she realizes that she does the exact same thing; there's just never been anyone there to catch her. She pushes the whisky bottle away; she's not thirsty anymore and she'd prefer if Peter was coherent for the rest of the night.

She quirks her head slightly out of a deepened curiosity and something else that she can't quite place. "What do you mean by that?" she asks, her breaths measured like the steady pulse of a metronome.

His hands have stopped trailing over the glass now, calmly resting on the bench top. She can't see any tension in his face, but at the moment she isn't sure of exactly what she sees in those shining blue eyes.

"She always acted as if there was nothing wrong," he shrugs, and purses his lips slightly.

"Sometimes that was the case, but other times," his tone becomes a little deeper, "she was hiding so much that I wondered how she ever managed to keep anything together. She was always trying to... atone for some mistake she'd make. She always seemed... a little haunted, I suppose."

This time it's her turn to trace little patterns over the glass with her fingers, because his words are so _eerily_ accurate that she's robbed of words altogether. Her eyes fall to the bottom of the glass where a few dregs of whiskey remain in a melancholic swirl. She's so entranced by the strange patterns in the bottom of her whiskey glass that she doesn't notice Peter's hand snake across the table and softly settle atop her own.

She looks up when she feels the touch, a warm caress over her skin, and she doesn't flinch away. She looks to Peter and sees the apprehension in his eyes; he's ready to retreat at the very instant that he feels that she doesn't want this.

"Olivia," he says, and she listens because she thinks that maybe he can help her understand the things that have eluded her understanding for years. "I need you to remember."

At that, she feels the lightness inside of her drain away, replaced by a foreboding responsibility that she wants no part of.

She stands from the lab bench and walks a few paces away, the echoing footsteps behind her telling her that Peter isn't far behind. She stops and folds her fingers in front of her face and presses them to her lips; she only wants some resolution in this chaotic maze that she's been navigating for as long as she can remember. "I can't," she whispers.

She feels a hand on her shoulder; it's gentle like the flap of a butterfly's wing. She turns to see Peter, his eyes plump with worry and something that she can only identify as she wonders if he can see it in her eyes.

How very _afraid_ she is.

"Yes, you can," he whispers back, and she can't find the words to respond. He takes another step forward and cups her face with one hand, then joining it with the other.

"Remember how your niece Ella used to call me Uncle Peter? I always thought that she was one of the sweetest kids I'd ever met."

She's silent now, because she's getting used to his knowledge of everything that he shouldn't know but does anyways. She feels unsteadiness in her body, and she's sure that there's a tremble showing in her bottom lip.

Peter runs a finger over her cheek, and it's when she feels wetness beneath his fingertip that she realizes that he's brushing away a tear that she hadn't noticed. She blinks once and then twice, because she's trying her utmost right now to keep everything together.

He steps close to her and she lets his eyes find hers; there's something oddly comforting about it, like the blooming of crocuses in early spring. She sees the pristine blue of his eyes and it pours into her, filling her with a warm tingling that radiates out into her body.

She's never felt like this with Lincoln.

"Olivia," Peter whispers again, and she's drawn back to the present. His right hand remains pressed to her cheek, while the other has fallen to his side. His rough palm grazes against her skin, and she likes the way her nerves spark against his touch. "Remember why you crossed over. Why you came to find me." He shakes his head. "Damn it, Olivia. It was because I belonged with you. And I still do."

His eyes are damp now and she reaches out for his face, because she hates to see anyone break like this. Her hand touches his skin, ghosting over his stubble. He places his larger hand over hers, and she can see how much he wants her to remember.

"I promised," he whispered, eyes turning red. "I promised to be here for you. I promised that you would never be alone." His hand drifts just below her jaw, and she can feel him trying to bring them closer together.

She doesn't entirely resist.

With a shaky breath, he speaks. "I promised that I would come back for you."

He then leans forward and presses his lips to hers.

At first, she resists; the sheer absurdity of this entire situation overwhelms her synapses like a flood. Her logic is completely overwhelmed by the sheer _desire_ to press her lips back against his, and she's never been one to push away such affection. She reaches a hand to his shoulder, her nails running over the cover of his shirt. The touch sparks a thousand sensations beneath her skin, and she can only feel the need for _more_.

It may be completely illogical, but she doesn't care; she refuses to allow this moment to fall out of her reach. Her life has been a series of seized moments, a conglomeration of her own instances of _carpe diem_, and this is no different.

She then feels something at the edge of her memory, flickering just out of her reach but close enough to sense. She tries harder, but Peter's tongue against her lips distracts her. She pushes back, because there is something about this nearly tangible being lingering at the edge of her perception that seems paramount to everything that she is. Their tongues are duelling when a blip of a moment she doesn't recognize blinks within her mind's eye; she trails her fingers over the back of his neck, grazing over the muscles there. The moment bleeds into an image, blurry at first but then clearing.

Peter breaks the kiss for an instant, and she opens her eyes. He's watching her, waiting for some sort of reaction because he knows that this is not like her, at least not now. She's slightly confused by her own actions – having every right to be – and that keeps her lips locked in their tomb of silence.

"Olivia," Peter says to her, and the sweet, endearing tone of his voice makes her body feel even lighter. "I love you."

Her world explodes into a million shards of memories. The image in her mind snaps into such a perfect clarity that it nearly knocks her over. She grips the edge of the lab bench like a vise and gasps when she realizes what she's seeing.

_I can see it_, she thinks. _Oh my God… I can see it!_

The moment plays through her mind; she watches herself, disguised as her alternate and asking Peter to come back, because she's thought of a hundred reasons why. But the one she states is paramount over them all:

_Because you belong with me_.

Her eyes dip shut as she remembers their first kiss in a world that wasn't a home for either of them. She brings a hand up to her lips, remembering the pressure of his lips against hers; it was the same as she remembered.

There isn't even a second of pause before another memory sprawls into her mind, this one of a moment lit by light trailing through amber whiskey and her own apprehension. She's standing with Peter, a kitchen and foyer on either side of them as they down shots of whiskey and her heart drums in her ears. The look in Peter's eyes makes a blush rise in her cheeks, and she hears her own words echo through the moment.

_I want what you want_.

There's a staircase that seems to stretch on forever, and then a flick that plunges them into darkness; she remembers not being afraid because he was there.

Her knees are shaking now, her grip not strong enough to keep her above the ground. She sees Peter reaching for her, his actions slowed and drawn out like an unwound spool of thread.

He doesn't reach her before the last two moments hit.

The first one begins with sunlight, so much sunlight that she feels a bloom of golden joy open inside her. She's nestled between sheets that smell of coffee and _him_; an arm draped over her side registers as Peter's without even looking. When he finally does wake, it's with a smile that's brighter than the light trailing through the windows. She feels the cool sensation of his skin against hers as he runs a hand over her shirt-clad back, his nose brushing against hers.

_This is my favourite time of day_, she hears herself say, and something insider her shatters because there is no more conflict inside her, only pure harmony remaining.

_Sunrise_, she thinks into the memory. _When the world is full of promise. _

Then her eyes fill with the image of that ominous machine, but now the entire context is different, because _Peter_ is its power source. He's standing at the threshold, on the brink of potential destruction and she wishes with everything she has that he makes it out of this.

She can't let him go.

"_Peter," _she says, and he turns quickly at the sound of her voice. She walks right to him and places her hand on his neck, cupping his nervous pulse. She says it before she can think of a reason not to:

_I love you. _

She's falling now, the ground lost beneath her tumbling form as everything spins in its contorted whorl of realities. She's terrified of the end of this limbo in the air, but two hands catch her before she slams into the floor. She takes a few breaths, her mouth dry and her tongue rough against the flesh as she swallows. She curves her neck up and sees Peter's face hovering over her. His blue eyes glow in their ethereal brightness as he reaches a hand out to her face and brushes a loose strand of hair aside.

"Peter?" she asks, her voice haunted by the whispers of dreams.

A smile breaks out on his face as he helps her stand again, but she still reaches for the lab bench out of caution. His hand still rests gently on the curve of her waist.

"I knew you'd remember me," he says, and she can't help but smile. She shakes her head slightly, still dazed by the sheer weight of what just happened.

"How?" she asks, curiosity outweighing everything in her mind.

He reaches his other hand out to her left one, which hangs casually at her side. He slowly curls his fingers around her palm and strengthens his grip; she lets him because it's so familiar that it seems to be almost natural to her. His gentle pulse echoes through his wrist, and she strokes his hand with her thumb. It seems so familiar, but she doesn't push it for the moment because she realizes that with time, everything will right itself to how it should be.

And when Peter answers her there isn't a shred of doubt in his voice, and she loves him all the more for it.

"Because," he says. "There isn't anyone else who can do the things that you can."

_Fin_

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><p><strong>Reviews are gold to me; I'd love to hear your final thoughts on this fic or what you thought of it overall :)<strong>


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